April has arrived, and with it a fine new issue of Artforum has landed in our mailbox. There’s plenty to love: an artist portfolio of photographs by Jean-Luc Moulène, a top-ten list from Hank Willis Thomas and an essay on the late Helen Frankenthaler by Anne M. Wagner, who manages to bring Charline von Heyl into the conversation. But we are here, as we are every month, to talk about the ads. Let’s get to it! –Andrew Russeth
Is Seoul ready for Paul McCarthy’s downtrodden dwarves? The roughly hewn sculptures in red, pink and yellow silicone that reference the latent sexuality and violence in the 19th-century classic tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and later adapted by Disney, will be shown at the Kukje Gallery. This one in particular, White Snow Dwarf (Bashful), jumped out at us, since we last saw it on Morley Safer’s segment for 60 Minutes. For a split-second, some three minutes into the segment, at the moment that Mr. Safer dismissively says “kitsch,” this libidinous dwarf made it onto national television. Hopefully, this exhibition will give these sculptures the opportunity to be explored with a little more subtlety and nuance than the TV journalist had to offer. —R.J.
A self-deconstructing statue of a self-destructing boy invites us to visit the latest show from Jack Shainman. As you might be able to tell from the ad, Gehard Demetz loves wood, children and sight gags. In a recent interview he said he's very influenced by "the idea of Rudolf Steiner, that children til 6 years live unconsciously things passed over from their ancients. My sculptures shall be children who appear adultly." --Dan Duray
Untitled's two-page spread touts their shows for the very fine artists Henry Taylor and N. Dash, and, on the right-hand side, offers a bit of enjoyable braggadocio from Untitled artist Matthew Chambers. "It was a hand written note," Untitled owner Joel Mesler wrote in an email to Gallerist, "which was included while he was sending us a basket of goodies. It was a good ad concept so we scanned it and placed it." Artforum needs more crayon ads in general. --D.D.
Back in February, our esteemed colleague Michael H. Miller picked Standard (Oslo)'s ad, which featured a tasty-looking meal of orange juice and two slices of bread spread with tomatoes and bedecked with cucumbers. Now the gallery is back with this fine selection of wrapped candies (it looks a bit like a William Daniels painting, no?), a modest glass of espresso and a bouquet of flowers. (Another colleague, Dan Duray, just pointed out that the panoply of candies nicely parallels the selection of artists listed on the paper: marzipan for Matias Faldbakken, aprikos for Alex Hubbard, caramel for Oscar Tuazon, etc.) Oh, and scrawled in a corner is a little note: "NEW SPACE IN MAY!" While some galleries would buy a large ad to trumpet such an announcement, Standard keeps the news admirably low key. --Andrew Russeth
Mr. Saul, the contradictory pop artist who has always been in opposition to anything aesthetically pleasing, paints a Warholian cartoon figure using a chainsaw to cut into the subject of Warhol’s most famous image, the Campbell’s soup can. He doesn’t look too happy about it, either. --Michael H. Miller
We’re fans of Elizabeth Peyton, but have to say we found it funny when flipping through the magazine and heard someone comment “that looks like an artwork made with Draw Something.” —R.J.
Dan Graham’s pavilions, which he has been working on since the 1980s, are meant to disorient (notice all those two-way mirrors), so it’s nice to see a blueprint for one laid out in such a detailed and transparent way. Also and more importantly: it looks pretty. --M.H.M.
No idea what's going on here, but it sure looks incredible, like Mr. Ray has perhaps coated a bunch of fabric--and maybe a varsity jacket?--in gray metal, or produced a painting of that subject. Cloaked in mystery, the ad beckons the viewer to Mr. Marks's Los Angeles gallery to see the real thing in person. What pleasures will the inimitable sculptor have prepared for us? --A.R.
